At Chollerford the even course of the river is broken by a long curving weir, over which the "wan water" comes down magnificently in seasons of flood. "The water ran mountains hie" at Chollerford Brae, says an old ballad; but that is clearly an exaggeration. Nevertheless, Chollerford is not the place at which one would choose to cross the river at flood-time, and without a bridge, as happened with "Jock o' the Side," when he was hotly followed by pursuers from Newcastle town. It is odd how ancient and mediæval and ballad history centres around this quiet spot. Half a mile away is Heaven's Field, where Oswald of Northumbria gathered his army around him, set up the standard of the Cross by the Roman wall, adjured his troops to pray to the living God, and overthrew in one of the most important battles of our early history the far larger forces of heathenesse. Here we are approaching the point where the North and the South Tyne, making a fork of swift, clear-shining water, unite their streams to form the great river of which Milton, and Akenside, and many another poet, have admiringly sung. By the ancient village of Warden, the two streams, as an old writer says, "salute one another;" and where they meet there is a stretch of water as wide almost as a lake, reflecting on still days the high-towering woods and the misty hills which divide North and South Tynedale. [Illustration: ALSTON MOOR.] THE TYNE. CHAPTER II. THE SOUTH TYNE. On the "Fiend's Fell"--Tyne Springs--Garrigill--Alston and the Moors--Knaresdale Hall--The Ridleys--Haltwhistle--Allendale--Haydon Bridge and John Martin--The Arthurian Legends.